Can You Get To The Right Level of Patient Care "Too Fast?"

When it’s a matter of life and death, is it possible to be “too fast” in getting a patient to the right level of hospital care?

A client recently wrote to tell us that’s exactly what staff at a referring emergency room saidwhen an ambulance showed up in record time.

 

“We aren’t ready yet,” someone in the ER shouted.

This happened the very day TeleTracking’s automated TransferCenter™ system went live at a regional referral hospital center.

The morning of “Go Live” was tense, the client said.  New staff, new software, and new processes created a lot of uncertainties. But the second call of the day changed all of that.

A physician from a sister hospital 30 miles away called to say they had a patient with an emergent condition that could not be treated at the referring facility. The Transfer Center Coordinator, using a “best practice” process recommended by TeleTracking consultants, was able to establish a direct physician to physician consult, assign a clean ready bed, and dispatch an ambulance, all from the Transfer Center’s control console.

The ambulance pulled into the driveway of the referring hospital’s emergency department in just 13 minutes.

The Transfer Center call recording software revealed that staff at the referring facility panicked when the EMS transport crew so quickly. They said they weren’t prepared for the transfer yet because “this new process is too fast.”

The client understood. Just a day before, the same activities would have taken over an hour and required multiple phone calls. But the new process was streamlined enough that everything could be accomplished with the first call.

Needless to say, the uncertainties which preceded this event disappeared. The staff at the regional facility was confident the new transfer center set-up would have a positive impact on getting patients at rural facilities to a higher level of care more quickly.

Clinicians who thought they were hearing the same old story about another new, streamlined process that never delivered on its promise quickly became believers.

And all it took was one phone call.

TeleTracking’s TransferCenter™ system is helping acute care hospitals all around the country provide seriously ill or injured patients with more and faster access to the advanced care they need, when and where they need it.

If you would like more information on our transfer center products and services and how they might help your hospital deliver the right level of patient care faster, download our Transfer Center Kit.